No horror, just home

Picking up where homicide detectives leave off - after the DNA is collected and the fingerprints lifted - Dwight Dampier is called on to clean up the aftermath of violent crimes in the area.

As a trusted crime and trauma scene cleaning specialist for about two decades, Dampier, 54, has been contracted to erase sights that send chills down most spines.

Scenes of violent deaths can be disturbing for anyone, said Gabriela Jaurequi, program coordinator for the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Victim Witness program, who hires several cleaning companies, including Dampier's.

"But when you're dealing with families, it could be much worse for them," she said. "(The job is) very important."

Setting aside the somber nature of the tasks, Dampier has come to realize the business is his calling.

And he does it with pride and respect, he said, because he also knows what it's like to lose someone to murder in Stockton, the community where he was raised.

Dampier, owner of Stormy Janitorial, can recall the first job site he took on: putting on his protective gear and removing biohazards, as visions of his own brother's homicide scene surfaced.

He had a flashback of looking into a window in 1974 and seeing the room where his 17-year-old brother had been shot. Those images of the blood spatter on the wall were vivid.

"She said, 'That's what you're supposed to do,' " Dampier recounted with a slight tremble in his voice. "That's what you're supposed to do."

You might trace his inclination back to his high school days. As a teen Dampier dreamed of owning his own mortuary.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I'm just fascinated by death."

A chance to explore the idea came sometime later with the passing of his father. Dampier asked the mortuary if he could assist in the embalming. They let him do only so much.

"I sat there. .... I knew the procedures, but to actually see it with my father was different," Dampier said.

He started mortuary training in San Francisco while he worked manual labor jobs.

He excelled in the schoolwork, Dampier said, but a turn in his mother's health had him switch course.

"I had to stop. She had cancer. Everybody had to start spending time with her," Dampier said. "Hospice did a great job, but we took responsibility.

"It was always like 'I'll go back to it.' "

Throughout the years, Dampier had often thought about his brother's untimely and horrific death. His brother, Howard Smith, just a teen, was shot execution style in 1974 by a man heated over losing a dice game.

A nagging and - his word - "weird" thought he often had: "Who cleaned it up?" It dawned on him one day to ask law enforcement. It turned out firefighters had the chore in Stockton.

"It took me about three years before I got a chance to clean a crime scene," Dampier said. "I started semipracticing."

Dampier used to purchase pig blood to practice in the mid-1990s. "I went to the store and bought anything that said it cleaned blood," he said.

None of the products in the market then seemed to do the trick.

One failed experiment after another, his quest led him to San Bernardino County, where he finally found methods that worked. He learned a few American Indian methods of removing enzymes and disinfecting.

But what those methods are, exactly, he will not disclose, because he promised not to reveal the ancient practices.

"I can just say that there are various routes they use to disinfect and break down the odor," Dampier said.

Today, he works with local county agencies, law enforcement and private parties to clean hoarding spaces; suicides, homicides and other traumatic scenes.

Dampier also has a construction and maintenance background that has proved useful in repairing contaminated or damaged spaces.

"Most people think crime scenes is just getting off the blood," he said. "Sometimes you have to repair walls or floors.

"It just seemed that everything I have done over time leads you to something," he said. "And somehow everything that I've done - I used to do house remodeling, cement work, all kinds of handyman repairs, embalming in mortuary school - all of those elements come into play cleaning crime scenes."

Dampier has expanded beyond the niche market to include commercial and residential cleaning, landscaping and hauling.

Dampier, a father of eight and grandfather of 18, said he still thinks about his brother once in a while. Only now, his death represents the empathy Dampier feels for others.

Before he and his crew cover up in masks and biohazard suits, Dampier prays. He prays for the house, for the victim, for the families, for the Police Department.

"If it's a murder, to catch these people," Dampier said. "But it gets hard sometimes riding around town after doing this for so long, 'cause everywhere you go, you see a job that you've done."

Jaurequi described Dampier as "very compassionate" based on comments from relatives of victims.

Oftentimes, Dampier said, he knows the families he deals with.

"This is my town," he said, as he wiped tears from his eyes. "I can't take away what happened, but I'm going to take away what they saw."

Contact reporter Jennie Rodriguez-Moore at (209) 943-8564 or jrodriguez@recordnet.com. Follow her at recordnet.com/courtsblog and on Twitter @TheRecordCourts.